Developing Targeted Contaminant Solutions
Water treatment can be a challenging endeavor. Clients often come to us looking to reduce concentrations of specific contaminants in their water. However, effective treatment of their contaminants of interest may require significant pre-treatment or consideration of competing chemistries in the water. We strive to bring a holistic perspective that focuses on solving the problem at hand but also considers waste generation, consumable costs, and operator labor.
What’s Your Treatment Goal?
Discharge
We help clients who are working to achieve compliance with a discharge permit to meet surface water, groundwater, sewer, or other discharge standards.
Use
We help clients who are working to improve the quality of water to their facilities. Uses include both consumption (drinking water) and non-consumption (process water).
Reuse
We help clients who are working to recycle water at their facilities. This includes a wide range of closed loop recycling and beneficial reuse applications.
What Do You Need to Treat?
Our team excels at evaluating influent water chemistries and effluent treatment goals and making treatment recommendations to our clients. Our goal is always to identify a solution that achieves the client’s treatment and operating objectives at the most economical cost.
TSS/Turbidity
Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and turbidity can originate from a variety of organic and inorganic sources and are a common benchmark of overall water quality. Total influent loading and particle size distribution are critical factors to identifying an effective removal process.
pH
Water pH is a common benchmark of overwall water quality that shows the balance of hydrogen ion (H+) and hydroxyl groups (OH-) in a given sample. Treatment for pH requires neutralizing the solution in the preferred direction by either adding an acid or base to the water.
Metals
Metals can originate from a variety of industrial sources: storage of raw materials, breakdown or dissolution of surface coatings, and other process-related and environmental background sources. Some metals can be targeted directly while others require specific pre-treatment steps or removal in tandem with other parameters.
Oils
Oils originate from a variety of both natural & synthetic sources, including: oil production, food processing, and machining lubrication. Free oils can be separated by a number of phase separation methods that take advantage of their hydrophobic nature. Effective removal of emulsified oils often requires some sort of disruption to the hydrophilic nature of the compound that wants to keep it dissolved in solution.
Bacteria
Bacteria issues in water originate from mostly human and animal sources. Some applications deal with bacteria from deeper in the earth comingling with wells and production activities. Depending on the level of log reduction needed and the situational maintenance preferences, various options for treatment exist.
PFAS
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals”, are a category of thousands of man-made chemicals (including PFOS, PFOA, and GenX). Selection of the preferred PFAS treatment option often depends on the influent loading level, the desired effluent target, and the waste disposal options for the liquid or solid wastes generated in the removal process.
More Stuff We Treat
We develop treatment solutions for a wide range of contaminants. Click on the buttons to the right to see projects we’ve done for each contaminant.
Don’t see your contaminant of interest? Not everything we’ve done is listed on our website. Please reach out to us to discuss your issue and see if we can meet your needs.
Solving Across Markets
Our work across a wide range of markets over many years has broadened our perspective of challenging water treatment issues. An “emerging contaminant” in one region might be a mature issue in another region. Equipment standards, automation preferences, and remote compliance trends evolve at different speeds in different markets. We leverage our position position serving multiple markets to bring these cross-market best practices and insights to our customers wherever we can.